The Institute of Physics mixing it in Westminster Picture: IoP/Mark Earthy

Meeting rooms of the Palace of Westminster can be disconcerting places in which to give speeches. This week, Alok Sharma MP hosted the launch event of a new report from the Institute of Physics on The Importance of Physics to the UK Economy. As soon as IoP president-elect Frances Saunders began her reply to his welcome, the division bell rang deafeningly for several minutes. When she finally managed to restart, a background rumble from some elderly men in the corner, hitting on the free wine, provided a distracting backdrop. I was told they were Lords, which seems too clichéd to really be true.

The report itself is full of information about, as the name suggests, the importance of physics to the UK economy. It kicks off (footnote one, executive summary) by defining "physics-based sectors" of the economy as those where "the use of physics - in terms of technologies and expertise - is critical to their existence. i.e. if there was no physics, these sectors would not exist."

It is clear from this that the report was not actually written by physicists, who would of course claim that physics is critical to the existence of everything since without it the Earth wouldn't go round the Sun, the atoms of your body would not hang together, and of course nothing would have mass. Still, the list of nearly a hundred industries and sectors given in the appendix, ranging from "Extraction of crude petroleum" to "Repair of communication equipment" seems a pretty reasonable delineation of the part of the economy that would quickly be in trouble if the UK stopped doing physics research and education.

There are some impressive numbers. The direct contribution to the UK's economic output is £77 billion, or 8.5%. This rises to more than £220 billion if you include indirect spend. 3.9m jobs are supported by these industries in the wider economy, with the average worker in a physics-based industry adding a factor of two more "gross value" than the average worker overall. It's not, to be honest, the main reason I do physics, but it is one reason that we should, as a nation. And I'm glad someone writes these numbers down, because unless we know these things, physics may cease to exist. At least in the UK.

Jonathan Flint, CEO of Oxford Instruments, gave a very clear and inspirational speech about the vitality of physics (and of his company, of course). An interesting statistic is that only 5% of the company's business is now in the UK. This is very positive from the export point of view. But since Oxford Instruments mostly supplies companies that are doing high technology research themselves, it may be a worry that a diminishing fraction of this is being done in the UK.

At least two of the attendees at the event were ex-students of mine. Gratifying though that was, I was beginning to feel a bit too senior at that stage and was quite glad of the presence of those may-be-Lords to remind me that I wasn't yet that far gone. Coincidentally, earlier in the day two of my current students - one of whom had initially taken physics because he wanted to work in banking - had been asking me for tips on physics-based careers. We need them.

In a comment after my last article I was accused of being part of a slick PR machine for particle physics. I'm trying to be flattered by that, but to be honest I see myself as a scientist, a physicist and a particle physicist in that order of importance. And I'm a PR person, or advocate, some way further down the list. Anyhow, I'm glad the IoP have some of this covered.